Gunman’s brain will be scrutinized for clues

The brains typically come by Federal Express. They arrive a couple of times a month at the laboratory of Dr. Hannes Vogel, director of neuropathology at Stanford University Medical Center. He prefers to receive them whole, fixed in formalin, along with their coverings and spinal cords.

One of the next brains to arrive, expected early next week, will be that of Stephen Paddock, who killed 58 concertgoers in Las Vegas earlier this month in a rampage without any clear motive. While law enforcement officials attempt to understand the mass shooting by gathering evidence and interviewing those who crossed the gunman’s path, Vogel is preparing to look for clues in the remains of Paddock’s brain. In a series of interviews, the first he has given on the case, he spoke about the work he plans to do.

Earlier, the office of the Clark County coroner had announced that an autopsy on Paddock had been completed and that tissues from his skull would be sent to Stanford to search for a potential brain disorder.

“Don’t spare any expense,” Vogel said he was told by a pathologist in the coroner’s office.

“The magnitude of this tragedy has so many people wondering how it could have evolved,” Vogel said.

That includes whether any one of more than a half-dozen neurological diseases proposed to the coroner’s office might have played a role. Even though the chances of finding answers in the brain tissue to the mystery of Paddock’s act are slim, Vogel said, “all these speculations out there will be put to rest, I think.”

Examinations of the brains of individual mass killers have been performed in the past, but experts said they were not aware of any compilation of the findings.

Vogel, one of the relatively few academic neuropathologists to focus on forensics, said he planned to look for and photograph any gross abnormalities, such as a tumor or malformation, that could be felt or seen by the eye alone.